HIB­BERT SET FOR A FIGHT

NEW Posh sign­ing Dave Hib­bert wants to give man­ager Gary John­son his first big headache of the League One sea­son.

The cen­tre-for­ward is de­ter­mined to chal­lenge the club’s first-choice strike pair­ing of Craig Mack­ail-Smith and Aaron Mclean for a start­ing place in the 2010-11 cur­tain raiser against Bris­tol Rovers at London Road on Au­gust 7.

Mack­ail-Smith con­firmed he was stay­ing at Posh for the im­me­di­ate fu­ture last week de­spite spec­u­la­tion to the con­trary. Mclean, who has been on the trans­fer list for eight months, is a more re­luc­tant Posh player, but he looks set to re­main at the club in the ab­sence of any ac­cept­able bids.

The pair scored 41 League One goals the last time they played at that level two sea­sons ago so would ex­pect to be the first choice for­wards.

But Hib­bert said: “I just can’t wait to get started. I know it’s go­ing to be tough break­ing into the start­ing line-up straight away as we have some ex­cel­lent for­ward play­ers at the club so it’s up to me to im­press in pre-sea­son and give the man­ager a de­ci­sion to make.

“I’m ac­tu­ally look­ing for­ward to pre-sea­son. I didn’t have one last sea­son as I was com­ing back from in­jury and it took me a while to get go­ing when the sea­son ac­tu­ally started.

“We are back in July and I ex­pect train­ing will in­volve a lot of run­ning, but it’s vi­tal to do the prepa­ra­tion in the sum­mer.”

Hib­bert scored 15 goals for Shrews­bury last sea­son and was voted player of the year by the League Two club’s fans. He was John­son’s first sum­mer sign­ing and he didn’t cost the club a penny as his con­tract had ex­pired.

The se­nior squad re­port back for pre-sea­son train­ing on July 1 be­fore head­ing for a train­ing camp in Por­tu­gal the fol­low­ing week.

Posh start their pre-sea­son cam­paign with a home fix­ture against Premier League West Ham on Wed­nes­day, July 14.

NOT HERE TO MAKE THE NUM­BERS UP: New striker Dave Hib­bert with Gary John­son.